The OK 1st Beauty School Is Bringing Beauty Behind Bars

It’s not often that reality is better than what we see on TV—especially in prisons. The OK 1st Beauty School at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center in Oklahoma—a beauty school even cooler than Laverne Cox’s salon in Orange Is the New Black—might be the exception.

Getting back into the real world can be tougher than life behind bars for women in the prison system—many lack the skills, education and resources needed to find a solid job on the outside. Members of the Oklahoma State Board of Cosmetology and Barbering and the R.I.S.E Program (a non-profit dedicated to teaching women in prison a vocational skill) are trying to change that by recruiting licensed master instructors from around the state to volunteer at correctional facilities to teach women a vocational skill in Cosmetology that they can put to use once they’re released. It’s beauty school with a major societal benefit.

OK 1st starts by giving women a solid foundation in developing their beauty game, but continues to “help bridge the gap from the prison gate back into community by helping them with job placement assistance, transitional housing, transportation issues, clothing and recovery support,” according to the organizers. Now after two years of offering a mentoring and teaching program, OK 1st Beauty School is in the process of renovating a space on prison grounds to offer a full-fledged curriculum at a fully functional beauty college to women at the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center in Oklahoma (a state that incarcerates the second highest number of women per capita according to the Prison Policy Initiative). At Oklahoma’s first beauty college at a women’s correctional facility, students will complete 1,500 hours of course work and be able to take their cosmetology licensure exam before they’re released. So far, R.I.S.E has raised about a third of their goal.

“This educational opportunity (1 year program) will change 20 qualified women's lives and their children's lives. These ladies will have the opportunity to stand on their own once they are released and will be changed women, moms, and tax paying citizens,” the organizers wrote on their GoFundMe page. “This will help resolve the ever growing recidivism (return to prison) rate by giving them the tools to live life successfully.” That’s what we call contouring for a cause.